Can you just start at a very high level, talk, uh, talk and, and at, at a broader level about the, the level of the problem of, of mass litigation costs when it comes es- especially to tort litigation, and how exactly that affects the everyday American?

Sure.

So, uh, tort litigation is, uh, when we have, uh, uh, lawsuits that are, uh...

Often these are, uh, what we call class action lawsuits, where we have, uh, groups of people who are suing with, uh, with one lawyer representing a group interest.

And the idea is that, uh, you know, the, uh, people who are suing are trying to, uh, get some kind of corrective action out of the, uh, individual.

And, um, we've basically created a, uh, a legal atmosphere that, uh, bends way over, uh, for the, the rights of the people who are filing the lawsuit.

And so what we've seen in the last few years, uh, is, is that the size of, uh, these tortious lawsuits have, uh, have grown exponentially.

Talk a little bit more just about the, the nexus and the trickle-down, if you want to use one, one of, one of the less favorite buzzwords, the, the trickle-down effect of this litigation that ends up affecting consumers' everyday lives.

What clicked in your head that allowed you to see it this way? And then just maybe you could describe the paper that you and Tony wrote.

Yeah.

So, uh, so 340B is a, uh, provision that forces, uh, pharmaceutical companies to sell prescription drugs at a steep discount to, uh, nonprofit hospitals.

So it was, uh, it began, uh, in 1992, and at the time, it applied to just a handful, I think eight, two handfuls, I guess, of, um, of, uh, entities.

And look, the idea is good, right? It's, uh, let's have the pharmaceutical companies give these people a steep, uh, discount on drugs so people who don't have health insurance or anything else can, uh, can get access to these life-saving drugs.

But the way it works today is that, uh, there are, uh, you know, hundreds of, uh, entities now, maybe it's thousands, that have access to the 340B program, and this is costing pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars, and it's not effective at all, right? There's-- Nobody is getting cheaper drugs because of this.

All that's happening is that we're increasing the effective revenue for hospitals that are designated as, as nonprofit or health providers that are designated nonprofit.

What are you doing on kidneys at the Kemp Foundation, which you alluded to?